A fine-grain, high-throughput architecture using through-wafer optical interconnect
This paper presents a highly parallel, three dimensionally interconnected system to process high-throughput stream data such as images. Optical interconnect at wavelengths to which silicon is transparent is used to create the 3D system. Thin film InP/InGaAsP-based emitters and detectors operating at 1.3 microns are bonded to the silicon circuitry, and emit through the silicon wafer to create the vertical optical interconnect. Foundry-fabricated Si circuits are post processed using standard, low cost, high yield microfabrication techniques to integrate the thin film devices with the circuits. In order to meet off-chip I/O requirements, a high-bandwidth, three dimensional optical network is also being designed. Using through-wafer optical interconnect, a new offset cube topology has been created, and naming and routing schemes have been developed. Its performance is comparable to that of a three dimensional mesh. A processing architecture has also been defined that minimizes overhead for basic parallel operations. A complete processing node for high-throughput, low-memory applications can be implemented using a fraction of a chip.
